Update on our whereabouts…
We remain in Springfield, Illinois. As you hopefully read in our last post, we cancelled a planned five-week visit to Portugal, Spain, and Italy, including a seven-night cruise of the Mediterranean, because of a family medical concern. Chris’s mom had taken a sudden and rapid change in health that required our presence. There is no way that we could have enjoyed five weeks abroad with this dark cloud lingering.
We now plan to remain here and help get her situated, then leave for our next work-camping opportunity near the end of March.
Below are some fun pics with captions of three other “shitty” situations. Enjoy the story!!!
@everyone
After living in the RV full-time for almost two years, the pedal valve that opens and closes when flushing had failed. Some people will fix just the valve, but that is a “shitty” job, so we just replaced the entire toilet!
When you live in a fiberglass and metal box, the electric meter IS NOT YOUR FRIEND in cold temps. We are on a monthly site costing $750/month plus METERED electric. We typically don’t pay for electricity because it is included in our work-camping agreements.
Top: 16F is the outside temp Middle 1: 51F is the water bay temp
Middle 2: 60F is the pass-through storage temp Bottom: 50F is the Living Room temp
On this particular night, we didn’t have any heat running in the living room. We redirected our heat resources to the water bay. We had a separate heater going in the bedroom.
CAMCO heated hose…SUCKS! In freezing temepratures the RV park has a heat-trace on thier supply line up to and including their supply spigot. Then it is up to the RV owner to use a heated water hose to keep the supply from freezing between the spigot and the RV water bay. This hose has been used for a total of about 10 nights over two winters. If you zoom in on the pic, you will see where the heated wire sheathing has failed. It tripped the GFCI outlet that it was plugged into, causing the hose to freeze. But, worse than that, it was arcing across the sheathing…this could have been bad! VERY, VERY Bad!!
When the hose works, they are awesome. But this is the second CAMCO heated hose we have owned. The first one NEVER worked, and this one worked for about ten nights. We paid $200 for this hose last January. Today it is in the dumpster.
Here, Ken is removing the OG toilet. The best part of this pic is that he isn’t showing any “plumber crack”!
Out with old…
Ken had installed this toilet water supply shut-off last year. It made shutting off the water supply very easy. That white thing is a water alarm.
With the old toilet removed, we discovered a lot of construction debris (woodchips & dust) under the old toilet.
All cleaned up!
In with the new…
Don’t leave your truck windows open when the campground staff are clearing sites of leaves.
